Updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday ... and maybe other days too.

Monday, August 29, 2011

This is the end IX

White to play and winRichard Reti, 1928

A little after this post appears I will be settling down to rounds five and six of the Berks and Bucks Chess Congress. If my recent tournaments are anything to go by, I'll probably have played a fair amount of chess already, and still two games to go. Yum!

One of the things that appeals to me about tournament play is that the games - my games, at least - simply tend to go on longer. I had two draws that lasted 60+ moves at both of my last two tournaments (4 in 14 games), for example, and just two of similar length in all my club games going back to the start of the 2007-2008 season (2 in about 120 games). Something to do with my adjournment sessions tending not to happen in practice, I guess.

Anyhoo, the higher the number of moves, the higher the chances of getting an endgame (unless ...) and the greater the probability that you'll end up with something like the position at the head of today's blog.

White to play and win - something to keep you chessically occupied this bank holiday if you're not already playing a tournament. It's quite a famous study, though. If you've already seen it you might want to take a look at Why study the endgame?, another White to play and win rook v pawn position, instead.

Finally, should your thirst for this sort of thing not already be slaked, here are three more rook v pawn endings. In these, though, I'm not going to tell you whether the rook wins or whether the pawn manages to draw.

Enjoy.

(PS: For a recent practical example of rook v pawn, see Adams-Zhou here)

Wow I actually looked at the Reti position only 1 hour ago. There are actually 2 moves that win- Rd3 also wins. Think I looked at the last position also- something to do with "shouldering". These were in Fundamental Chess Endings by Gerd Muller and Frank Lampard.Andrew

I - this comes from Emms' book and apparently 1 Rf2 is the only way to win, the point being that you make a 'pointless' move with your rook to stop the pawn's king from block your king from coming near.

It is a draw though, but it's a draw in an interesting way. It's worth finding you're way to the end - well at least I think it is. White uses the shoulder charging defensive method - but in a different way. It leads to a surprising (if you haven't seen it before) conclusion.

Yes that's it. Something about promoting to a knight to save the day really tickles me. Has anybody ever had to play that ending out? I did once at a Golders Green Rapidplay but my king and knight were in the centre of the board so it wasn't too desperate.